NEW YORK -- George Steinbrenner, who rebuilt the New York Yankees into a sports empire with a mix of bluster and big bucks that polarized fans all across America, died Tuesday. He had just celebrated his 80th birthday July 4.
Steinbrenner had a heart attack, was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Fla., and died at about 6:30 a.m, a person close to the owner told The Associated Press.
Re July 14 article, “Yankees’ mercurial leader dies at 80”: In my opinion, [Yankees’ owner George] Steinbrenner’s legacy was the establishment of “free agency” in the 1970s. Professional baseball players as well as other professional athletes should thank “the Boss” for making them instant millionaires. Steinbrenner carried [football coach] Vince Lombardi’s axiom “winning is the only thing” a step further by using free agency to buy a championship team at any cost. This paradigm changed the face of baseball forever, for it lessened the role of minor leagues as the training grounds for the development of major-league players. Now the players start from the top. This could well explain why the vast majority of professional baseball players do not hit or pitch anywhere near their respective salaries. Furthermore, free agency transformed baseball from a sport to a bigtime entertainment. Finally, has Steinbrenner’s legacy improved the quality of baseball over the past 37 years? I say no. In fact, one of the comments made on [fi lm maker] Ken Burns’ PBS special on baseball was that the 1950s were probably baseball’s pinnacle. How well I remember that time, for I was a teenage fan.
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